The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] From the overall meaning of the teachings of anthroposophical spiritual science, you can see that what matters is understanding how various spiritual beings integrate into the different realms of existence, guiding and strengthening them. It is necessary for humanity today to be imbued with the knowledge of how the various spheres of existence are guided, directed, and so on by individual spiritual beings. For our civilization has, in the course of modern times, blurred this awareness of concrete spirituality in existence. People generally like to speak of the Divine that permeates everything. But such general talk of the Divine does not lead to an understanding of the world that can then serve as a solid foundation for life. It is certainly true that, ultimately, everything one perceives as spiritual must point toward a unified whole. However, if one looks for this unity—I would say—too soon, then all real insights into the course of world events become blurred. That is why it is necessary to move beyond general, abstract talk about the Divine and to get to know the concrete, guiding spiritual beings in nature, history, and so on, just as we have done time and again throughout history. And from this perspective, I would like to draw your attention today to some very important and significant foundations of our world constitution.

[ 2 ] The day before yesterday, I pointed out that certain spiritual beings come together in the world—as it were, in a struggle—for the purpose of building up and fully enlivening the human being. The truth—which is, after all, an old one for us—regarding the opposition between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spiritual forces was once again brought to our attention from a certain perspective the day before yesterday. Today, let us consider the matter once more from a different angle.

[ 3 ] What is particularly characteristic of the most recent civilization—which is now embroiled in such catastrophic events and reveals such forces of decline—is, after all, the spread of rational thinking throughout all of humanity. One really must gain some insight into the entirely different state of mind that prevailed among people—even in civilized Europe—seven or eight centuries ago. What sets the tone so generally today, what permeates the entire inner life of human beings and, from a certain perspective, will continue to permeate it even more, is precisely intellectual thinking. Now the task is to perhaps connect such a more spiritual concept with something that is more tangibly graspable. For it is indeed beneficial to truly grasp and penetrate external, material existence from the perspective of the spirit as well. That which underlies thinking in our organism consists of the purely mineral processes occurring within it. So please understand me correctly: the processes within us that are proper to our humanity, the processes we share with the animal realm, and the processes we share with the plant realm—all of these are connected only indirectly, not directly, to the fact that, in the more recent sense of human development, we are human beings capable of intellectual thought. The fact that we also have a solidified mineral constitution within us is what enables us to think rationally.

[ 4 ] When we look at the realms of nature in the universe, we must say that they are out there and they are also within us. Let us first consider the realm of thermal phenomena, that is, the heat ether. We also carry the effect of this heat ether within us. We carry it within us in our blood. The function of our blood essentially consists in using it as a carrier to transmit the processes of warming—the heating of our entire organism—throughout our body. Intellectual thinking is not based on all that takes place in the realm of heat. So when we look out at the heat processes in the cosmos, we can say: These heat processes also continue within the skin of our organism; but what we encounter in the cosmos as heat processes—what is particularly encountered by those who observe the cosmos in the state in which it initially manifests exclusively as heat processes, during the Saturn state—all that which is out there in the cosmos represents nothing to us of which we can say that it stimulates intellectual thinking within us.

[ 5 ] But rational thinking is not based on what takes place within us as a result of breathing in air and processing it in our organism, either. When we look at the realm of air, we see that processes take place there which continue within our organism through the process of breathing. But even all that we find represented there through the realm of air has nothing to do with our intellectual thinking either.

[ 6 ] We can consider the realm of water as the third realm. Out there in the cosmos, we see the processes taking place in the liquid realm. These, too, continue within our metabolism, insofar as it takes place in the liquid state. Out in nature, we see the cycle of liquids; within ourselves, we also see a kind of cycle of liquids. Everything that takes place within us in this way, in turn, has nothing to do with what constitutes our intellectual thinking. But when we look out into the cosmos and see that water condenses into ice, that certain mineral substances settle as sediments, that rocks form, that crystals form, in short, when we observe the processes of the mineral and solid realms out there in the cosmos and their counterparts within the confines of our organism, what takes place there as mineral processes is connected to everything that ultimately culminates in our intellectual thinking. We, as human beings, are thus integrated into the cosmos and into these various realms. But if we were merely integrated into the various realms without being particularly influenced by the mineral realm—that is, by those forces that confront us in crystallization, salt deposition, and so on out in the world—we would not be thinking beings in the sense that we have been, particularly since the mid-15th century. It is indeed a fact that since the middle of the 15th century, the activity of the mineral forces within the human organism has become the decisive factor, the guiding influence. Before that, other forces—the forces of water, the forces of air, and so on—were active in human beings to a remarkable degree. Consequently, intellectual thinking was not the particularly significant element in human activity.

[ 7 ] Now, in all that surrounds us—the various realms in which we live: the realm of the solid earthly, the realm of the watery-liquid, the realm of the airy, and the realm of heat—leaving aside for the moment the higher etheric realms—divine spiritual beings are also at work in all of these. These realms do not consist solely of what we call the material forces of the world, the material entities of the world; rather, all these realms are permeated by various spiritual beings. Let us now sketch out schematically what can illustrate an important fact regarding our connection to the world.

[ 8 ] Let’s assume that here I would schematize the mineral-earthly realm (see drawing, light); I would then characterize the watery realm here (red); I would characterize the realm of the airy (blue) here, and then the realm of the warmth ether (reddish-violet).

[ 9 ] Now, what is peculiar is that all those spiritual beings which pre-Christian times—namely, pre-Christian Judaism—conceived of as being under the leadership of Yahweh or Jehovah, —that is, everything that was regarded, even by the Hebrew initiates, as belonging to the realm of Yahweh or Jehovah—essentially extend his dominion over the first three kingdoms, as well as over others, but of these four, over the first three kingdoms. So if I were to map out for you the area encompassed in the world by the dominion of Yahweh, I would have to say that it is this area (the top three in the diagram). It is indeed the case that the dominion of Yahweh encompasses all the kingdoms of nature that we have listed, with the exception of the mineral-physical kingdom. You must therefore be clear that when the ancient Jewish writings speak of the Divine, they are actually always speaking only of the Yahweh Realm itself in relation to the warmth ether, the air being, and the water being—and this was, in pre-Christian times, a profound initiatory truth — this fundamental truth was already alluded to in a very spiritual way in the story of creation. It is clearly expressed; one need only understand the meaning of the biblical words correctly: Yahweh, so to speak, went down to Earth and formed humankind from the dust of the Earth. He took that which is not part of his own realm to form the outer human being. — So the Bible does indeed express this clearly. As I said, in pre-Christian Jewish initiatory science, it was a truth of initiation that Yahweh did not form the outer human being from his own realm of power, but that he went down to earth and, as it were, formed the human shell—which could not come from his realm—from the earthly dust that was foreign to him. Then he breathed into it that which comes from him: the animal soul, the nephesh. This is what he gave of himself; it came from the three realms over which he ruled. It is indeed true that most superficial Bible scholars actually do not understand at all what is written in the Bible. The Bible—if one understands it, one can see this—speaks with extraordinary precision, and its statements must be taken very precisely indeed. Yahweh formed man from the dust of the earth—that is, from the mineral kingdom, which was foreign to him—and he gave him the breath of the soul from his own kingdom. Thus, what lives within human beings as an emanation of Yahweh is indicated by the fact that Yahweh breathed the living breath into them.

[ 10 ] Humanity then evolved and developed an element foreign to Yahweh as it continued to evolve alongside the mineral kingdom, which in more recent times—that is, since the fifth post-Atlantean period—gave rise to the realm that has come to play a particularly dominant role in human beings, because it formed the foundation for their intellectual culture. So we can say: As long as intellectual culture was not the dominant force in human beings, they could still have a form of rule such as the rule of Yahweh. But then the mineral nature began to assert itself from the founding of Christianity until the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. At that point, humanity had to be helped, so to speak, from another direction. And here you can also see how necessary the Christ impulse was for humanity during the time when the mineral nature had become essential. The old Yahweh or Jehovah impulse was simply no longer sufficient.

[ 11 ] Consider what I have just told you in light of certain facts. Consider the fact that human beings would not be able to think with a clear, rational mind if they were subject solely to the nature of Yahweh, which has no influence on their mineral nature. Therefore, if we wish to focus primarily on the activity of Yahweh within human beings, we cannot look to what is found in our intellectual culture; rather, we must turn solely to what is expressed in our dreams. What is dreamed—that which does not extend to the point of being grasped in our soul life through sharply defined intellectual concepts—that is our Yahweh life. Everything that moves within the fluid element, even that which is more fantastical or imaginative—and which can be compared externally to the moon’s influences on human beings—that is the human being’s Yahweh nature. That which stands in opposition to the Yahweh nature is sharp thinking. But human beings owe this to the fact that salts are deposited within them, that mineral forces are at work within them.

[ 12 ] Now consider that, fundamentally, historical development has been such that the ancient Yahweh religion lost its significance with the Mystery of Golgotha. It lost its significance precisely because human beings were increasingly entering a stage of development in which their mineral nature came to dominate. When the Mystery of Golgotha then took place, there was still enough of the old dream-wisdom remaining to understand the Mystery of Golgotha through that dream-wisdom. And those who had risen above the old dream-wisdom—who had already gained some insight through various initiations from intellectualist culture, such as Saul-Paul—needed a special influence, such as that which came upon Paul through the event at Damascus, in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. It is, after all, of profoundly deep significance that Christian tradition states that Saul-Paul—who, in a certain sense, had been initiated into the Hebrew mysteries prior to the Mystery of Golgotha—needed, in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, had to be transported into a realm of knowledge that did not operate within the sharp contours of the intellect, but rather unfolded within the blurred elements of the dreamlike. There Paul experienced the certainty that Christ was present in Jesus through the Mystery of Golgotha. It was still possible, through the ancient wisdom of dreams, to grasp something of the event of Golgotha; and if one was transported into this realm by a special influence—as was the case with Paul—one could comprehend the event of Golgotha. However, the ancient wisdom of dreams gradually declined. It remained confined to human dreaming and is now in a state of complete decadence. And as the fifteenth century approached, European civilization became increasingly dependent on intellectualist culture, on the intellectualist element, and under the influence of this intellectualist element, modern scientific thought emerged.

[ 13 ] Well then, please consider the following. The ancient religion of Yahweh must not be understood merely in terms of its outward words; that would, in fact, be a materialistic view of religion; one must grasp it in its inner spirit. It presents itself to us as a historical phenomenon in such a way that the God of Yahweh is the God of a people. Outside the boundaries of the Jewish people, the God of Yahweh is no longer the God of Yahweh. And this is the essence of the God of Yahweh: that he does not encompass all of humanity, but rather a part of humanity. Essentially, this sense of God has carried over into our own time, and during the World War one could see it particularly clearly again, as every nation spoke of divine providence—or, as some even said, Christ—helping them. In a sense, every nation wanted to march against another nation under the leadership of Christ. But simply calling something “Christ” does not yet mean one has truly grasped Christ; rather, Christ is only truly grasped when one turns, in one’s entire sense of being, to that being who possesses the nature of Christ. One can say a thousand times, “I will fight in the name of Christ”—but if one fights only for one nation, one is simply giving the being of whom one speaks a false name; one calls it “Christ” but means only the God Yahweh. And in the midst of this war catastrophe [1914–18], all the nations have fallen back into the religion of Yahweh. Only there were so many Yahwes. Every nation worshiped a god who was actually entirely in the character of Yahweh. Christ has, in fact, completely disappeared from human consciousness. One could see from these catastrophic events how Christ had completely vanished from human consciousness.

[ 14 ] But now we can see this in other areas as well. After all, the entire modern scientific culture has now come to the fore. What, exactly, does this modern scientific culture encompass? — Essentially, only the mineral-physical realm. Just think how immediately uncomfortable modern scientists become when they are expected to talk about anything other than the mineral-physical realm. As soon as there is any talk of anything that is a principle of life, modern scientists demand that one explain only those processes in living beings that are mineral, chemical, and so on; they do not engage with life itself, and certainly not with the soul and so on. Thus, this modern scientific approach has developed entirely within the realm not encompassed by the religion of Yahweh. This modern scientific approach has developed entirely within the elements of mineral-physical life that are alien to Yahweh. In order for this science to become an element of civilization, it is entirely dependent on receiving the divine-spiritual from another source.

[ 15 ] When people in ancient Judaism spoke of any kind of insight, it was a dreamlike insight. The prophets, who possessed the highest insights, are described to you as the bearers of these very prophetic dreams. All of this is connected to this matter. It was through this dream-wisdom that the Mystery of Golgotha was also understood. But this dream-wisdom faded away. The Mystery of Golgotha was indeed passed down historically, and it was spoken of in the traditional church communities, but the true understanding of it could not be found there. In contrast, modern science has arisen out of an essentially godless, spiritless element—an element alien to Yahweh—and, because understanding had not yet extended beyond the Christ element, out of a spirit-alien, mineral-physical element.

[ 16 ] This science must once again be permeated by a spiritual element right down to its individual particles. It is spiritless. It is spiritless because it can no longer be Yahwistic. External culture attempted to preserve something religious through a form of religious counterfeiting—by giving Yahweh the name of Christ during the catastrophe of war. But it was preserved precisely through a kind of religious counterfeiting. But science has turned completely away from the spirit, offering only descriptions of the physical and sensory, because it has not yet advanced to an understanding of Christ and, at most, still clings to the old understanding of Yahweh only when people rage against one another, as happened during the catastrophe of war—but not when investigating facts of nature. Thus we have a spiritless science, an intellectualistic and spiritless science. We are therefore surrounded by a realm in which the Yahwistic, the Jehovah-like, reigns. It permeates us. But we are no longer aware of it, because it permeates us primarily in all the states that constitute our sleep states. If we were to slip into the realm of sleep and suddenly awaken outside our bodies, we would perceive the spiritual nature there quite clearly under Yahweh’s guidance; in a sense, dreams would then appear to us on the waves of the sea of Yahweh, emerging from the elements of Yahweh.

[ 17 ] The Yahweh nature also reigns in our will—regarding which I have often explained to you that we sleep even while awake. The Yahweh nature reigns throughout the entire human metabolism. As feelings arise from the metabolism and permeate the rhythmic system, waves emerge from the Yahweh sea—just as dreams do—while, on the other hand, certain feelings arise. But where we live in that realm which can only be understood by the intellect, by reason, there Yahweh has no part. When the moon slowly bathes everything in a uniform, dreamlike light and this dreamlike light pours over everything, then, one might say, humanity has spread the Yahweh character over the fields of the world. When the sun shines brightly on our rocks, when it casts its light across various objects and gives them sharp contours, so that we are led to comprehend this with our intellect, then the nature of the sun—which is not the nature of Yahweh—manifests itself. We can only spiritualize the world if we can look into the Christ-being within it, if we can look into this world in such a way that we see the Christ-being within it. Modern science has had no eye for this Christ-being and has regarded that which is not Yahwistic—that which is sunlit and can be grasped in sharp intellectual contours—as spiritless.

[ 18 ] That is the deeper connection. And what kind of realm is it that confronts us in the mineral kingdom? — Well, I spoke the day before yesterday about how, on the one hand, within the Yahweh Realm, the Luciferic beings appear because they have remained stuck at earlier stages of development. When we are present in the Jahve realm—for example, during sleep—the Luciferic beings assert themselves in our feelings and in our impulses of will. The realm that we must master with our intellect extends around us as the mineral realm. This is the realm alien to Yahweh; it is the realm into which those beings belonging to the Ahrimanic realm have penetrated. The Ahrimanic beings, however, have penetrated it because Yahweh, so to speak, was unable to keep them at bay (see illustration on page 265, green). And as we extend our gaze across this realm, we are in constant danger of being taken by surprise within it—to our confusion—by the Ahrimanic beings. These Ahrimanic beings—I have, after all, tried to capture this image in the woodcarving group that is to stand one day in our Goetheanum—can actually only be at home in the realms that surround us within the mineral world. These Ahrimanic beings are primarily beings endowed with intellect. This Mephistophelean figure that you see at the bottom of our wooden sculpture group—this Mephistophelean-Ahrimanic figure—is fundamentally intelligent, thoroughly permeated by the intellect; but with regard to what is actually Yahwistic—that is, what otherwise lives in human metabolism, insofar as it does not deposit salts or is not mineral in nature at all, but is of a fluid nature, consisting of fluid exchange and fluid metamorphosis—with all that lives in our breathing, with all that lives in our thermal conditions—the Ahrimanic has no direct connection to any of this.

[ 19 ] But now it is striving to enter. Human beings are, after all, made from the dust of the earth. That which is mineral is the true realm of Ahriman. There Ahriman can enter; there he feels at home. And he also feels at home when he can penetrate us in regard to everything within us that is mineral. You secrete salts, and through this you are actually able to think; through the deposition of salts—indeed, through everything that manifests as a mineral process within you—it is through this that you are a thinking being. Ahriman wants to enter this realm. But he really has only a certain affinity for this mineral aspect. And that is why he strives to gain a share in the blood, in breathing, and in metabolism. He can do this only if he cultivates certain qualities in human souls—if, for example, he fosters in them a very particular inclination toward dry intellect, which seeks to lose itself in materialism, toward the intellect that scoffs at truths imbued with feeling—where, in other words, he can cultivate the arrogance of the intellect within the human soul. Then he makes human blood, human respiration, and human metabolism inclined toward him as well, and he can then, so to speak, slip out of the salty, mineral realm into the blood and into respiration.

[ 20 ] This is the battle that Ahriman wages in the world through human beings. By coming down to Earth and creating human beings from the Earth, Yahweh—in order to advance them further than he could have in his own realm—formed them from an element foreign to them and merely breathed his own element into them, instilling it within them. But in doing so, Yahweh has enlisted the aid of something to which the Ahrimanic beings have access. As a result, Yahweh has become entangled, for the sake of Earth’s development, in this struggle against the Ahrimanic element, which seeks to use human beings to gain control of the world through the indirect route of the mineral process.

[ 21 ] In fact, the Ahrimanic beings have achieved a great deal in this area. For when a human being is born into—or conceived for—physical existence, he descends from the spiritual-soul worlds and surrounds himself with physical matter. But given the nature of our present civilization, shaped by the conventions of traditional creeds, people tend to forget this pre-birth existence in the spiritual-soul realm. They do not want to admit it; they want, as it were, to erase the pre-birth being from human existence. Pre-existence has increasingly been declared heretical by traditional creeds. People wish to limit themselves to having human existence begin with physical birth or physical conception, and then to link what lies after death to that. If this belief in a mere post-mortem state—in the state that exists only after death—were never pushed back, if it were to encompass all of humanity, then the Ahrimanic entities would have triumphed. For if human beings were to consider only what they experience between birth and death as a result of their earthly nature, and were to acknowledge only a continued existence after death without looking back to a previous life before birth, the Ahrimanic forces would indeed gradually take hold of the human being through the mineral process. Everything that is Yahwistic—that is, everything that has come down from Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon—would be cast aside from earthly evolution, and a new creation would begin with the Earth, one that would, however, deny everything that came before.

[ 22 ] That is why it is so important to combat with all one’s energy this view that rejects pre-existence. Human beings must recognize that they existed before they were born or conceived into physical existence. They must accept with reverence and sanctity that which was bestowed upon them from the divine-spiritual worlds prior to this physical, earthly existence. By combining their belief in the afterlife with the recognition of their pre-birth existence, they prepare their souls in such a way that they cannot be corroded by Ahriman.

[ 23 ] It is therefore necessary—as these discussions show—that we gradually introduce into our language a word that we do not yet have; I have already drawn your attention to this. Just as we speak of immortality while thinking of the end of our physical existence, we must also learn to speak of “unbornness.” For just as we are immortal, we are in reality, as human beings, unborn. But try to find a common word for “unborn” in the languages of civilization! You have “immortal” everywhere, but you do not have “unborn.” We need the word “unborn”; it must be just as common a word in the languages of civilization as the word “immortal,” which the languages already possess. This reveals the Ahrimanization of modern civilization. It is one of the most important symptoms of the Ahrimanization of modern civilization that we have no word for the state of being unborn. For just as we do not come into being with the death of the Earth, neither do we come into being with birth or conception. We must have a word that clearly points to pre-existence. One must not underestimate the significance that lies in this word at all.

[ 24 ] No matter how much you think, no matter how keenly you think, there is something within you that is simply intellectualistic in human beings. The moment a thought takes the form of a word—even if the word is merely thought of as such, as in word meditation—at that very moment the word imprints itself upon the ether of the world. The thought itself does not imprint itself upon the ether of the world; otherwise, we could never become free beings through pure thinking. For we are bound at the very moment something is imprinted. We are not free through the word, but through pure thinking—as you can see further on in my *Philosophy of Freedom*—but the word, for its part, imprints itself upon the world ether.

[ 25 ] Now consider this: For the science of initiation, it is simply a fact today that, throughout the Earth’s ether, because civilized languages lack a suitable word for “unbornness,” this state of being unborn—which is so important for humanity—is not imprinted at all into the world ether. But everything that is imprinted in the world ether in the form of important words—concerning coming into being, concerning everything that pertains to human beings in their childhood and youth—all of this represents a terrible horror for the Ahrimanic forces. Immortality inscribed in the world ether—the Ahrimanic forces actually tolerate this very well, for immortality means that they wish to begin a new creation with the human being and to journey forth with the human being. This does not bother the Ahrimanic beings when they repeatedly sweep through the ether to play their games with human beings, even when so much is proclaimed from the pulpits of immortality and inscribed into the world ether. That suits the Ahrimanic beings just fine. But it is a terrible horror for them when they find the word “unbornness” inscribed in the world ether. Then the very light in which they move is extinguished for them. Then they can go no further; then they lose their bearings; then they feel as if in an abyss, as if in the bottomless void. And from this you can see that it is an Ahrimanic act to prevent humanity from speaking of the unborn. No matter how paradoxical it may seem to modern humanity when one speaks to them of such things, modern civilization requires that we speak of such things. Just as the meteorologist describes a breath of wind, just as the Gulf Stream is described in studies of the Earth, so too must we describe what is happening spiritually around us—how Ahrimanic beings permeate our surroundings, how at home they feel in everything related to death and dying, even when dying is denied, and how they are plunged into the terror of darkness when they encounter all that points to birth, growth, and flourishing. And we must learn to speak scientifically about these things just as modern science speaks of the mineral-physical realm, which has been forsaken by Jehovah.

[ 26 ] It is, in essence, nothing less than the struggle against the Ahrimanic forces that we ourselves must take up. And finally, whether people realize it or not, what is often raised against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is, at the same time, Ahriman’s struggle against that which, for the sake of humanity, must be emphasized more and more intensely through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

[ 27 ] When one experiences something like the recent attacks, isn’t it obvious that people cannot even touch the humanities themselves? I have spoken to you about the particularly vile, despicable attack that is now taking place again in Germany, in which the “noble” “Frankfurter Zeitung” is behaving in a particularly shameful manner. It did publish our response after launching that utterly abhorrent attack, but only to follow it up with a full column of its own nonsensical remarks. These things, of course, stem from those people who would very much like to see the science of anthroposophy disappear, but are too lazy—or perhaps too incompetent—to engage with it.

[ 28 ] So these people seize upon such moments of attack—such as those now emerging in Germany, for example—to cast suspicion on precisely what cannot be refuted. If you connect this to the Ahrimanic entities, you will begin to see things a little more clearly. There are a great many people in the scientific community today who seem to think very well. But why? — Ahriman penetrates the mineral world, after all, so do not be surprised if these people develop quite a lot of intellect. It is Ahriman within them, and it is more convenient to let Ahriman do the thinking within oneself than to think for oneself. After all, it’s easier to pass your exams if you let Ahriman do the thinking within you. It’s easier to become a private lecturer and a university professor if you let Ahriman do the thinking from the lectern than if you think for yourself. And because so many people let Ahriman do the thinking within them, the attacks naturally come from the Ahrimanic side. So these things do have an inner spiritual connection that one must see through. Therefore, one must not be so foolish as to reproach us time and again when we are compelled to strike with quite sharp blows at that which seeks to utterly destroy spiritual science.

[ 29 ] The lecture series in Stuttgart began yesterday; I myself will likely be speaking in Stuttgart starting on the 16th on a scientific topic: mathematics, scientific experimental observation, and scientific findings. — These lectures, and those that will be held here starting on April 3, are intended to show how the spiritual sciences can enrich modern science. And ever since we began working in this direction, we have faced more and more attacks. But I hope that understanding will also grow that we must arm ourselves against what is emerging; for this arming also means, at the same time, a certain strengthening in the direction of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And this strengthening must take place. Within the world of our forces of decline, all of this is moving toward forces of ascent.